


Conversion

by ferventrabbit



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-11 20:57:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9022431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferventrabbit/pseuds/ferventrabbit
Summary: The woodsman notices a presence in the wilderness. A giver of gifts.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PockyGhost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PockyGhost/gifts).



> This story is a gift for pockyghost - hope you enjoy!
> 
> Warning: contains graphic imagery

Each day, the woodsman heard the sharp rap of the hunter’s gun.  
  
It was one quick jolt – a perfect shot, he assumed, for another was never heard. Each day the sound rung out and echoed from a different place, first north then west, then travelling by degrees until it has circumnavigated the entire woods. The woodsman knew when to expect it. It was mid-afternoon, when the sun grazed the tops of the tallest pines in harsh light. Yet every day he startled at the noise. It lingered with him, an unbidden reminder. He heard it in the quiet moments after supper, in the morning before the sunrise and during the storms that raged through as weather changed. The quality of it changed in his memory so that it became both more and less than a gunshot, reflecting something that he thought he remembered from long ago. He could never place it.

***  
  
The woodsman hung his shirt on a rope line, beat his trousers in the rough water of the stream and watched the droplets fall as he curled them tight. As he hung them up next to his shirt the sound of the shot cracked through the branches, hit him with an almost physical force. The hounds darted from the kitchen and let out a few bays, circled the woodsman’s feet, sniffed the edges of the property with customary care. The woodsman called them to him.  
  
Today the sound came from the east. There were soft clouds inching over the trees, darkness on their heels.  
  
The woodsman wore his heavy boots and an old, worn shirt with holes peppering the collar. He swung his great coat over his shoulders and led his hounds into the brush, guiding them forward with soft whistles. Their noses bumped over roots and leaves, their hackles raised. The woodsman kept eastward, gauging the distance by the seconds it took for the sound to reach his cabin. He walked without purpose. He had no expectation, but he could sense an unarticulated tension, some anxiety in the constant flexing of his fingers, his hair clinging to the sweat on his brow.  
  
They reached a clearing, and the smell of gunpowder hovered. The hounds circled the edges of the trees, marking then with quick sprays of urine and churned dirt. In the center of the clearing was a full-grown doe, dead and ringed in deep green grass. The woodsman felt paralyzed. She seemed about to breathe, her coat smooth and bloodless. He jumped when one of the hounds brushed his leg – the other had its nose in the doe’s flaccid ear. “Hey!” he said, and the dog hunkered down and slunk towards him. He gestured for them to stay.  
  
He approached the deer in a quiet circle, as if she might bolt at the sound of his footsteps. Her eyes were black glass. In the center of her forehead was a clean, slick bullet hole, two drops of red slipping through like beads. The woodsman stood motionless, and the cool air crept up his sleeves and through the holes at his collar. When the light was gone he turned and led the hounds back through the trees. Branches scraped at his cheek and neck. He imagined the silent doe punctured by roots and cradled in the yawning trunk of old tree, her nose pointed up to acknowledge him.

  
No hunter abandons his prey to decay, to be scavenged.  
  
The woodsman cooked his dinner over the weak flames in his hearth – tough duck, thin carrots from the tiny garden leaning up against the cabin. The doe lay untouched in the clearing.

***

For five days, the woodsman traced the shot through the trees. Each day he travelled shorter distances, circling his cabin in elliptical bands. Each day there was a clean, quiet kill, untouched. One afternoon he found an immense buck, its antlers curled high like smoke. It had been hit in the neck. Its head bent like an elbow. There was a small pool of blood under the wound – it has bled a bit, then, before dying. Its tongue lolled out of its mouth and grazed the ground.

***  
  
The woodsman woke before dawn on the sixth day. He sharpened his hunting knife as the sun rose, and his mind was dipped in the dreams he’d had – of a doe mounted on the stars, her black eyes void.  
  
The hunter left no tracks. The ground had been undisturbed – no footprints, no trace. The woodsman wondered if the huntsman returned, if he noticed signs of this daily pilgrimage, him and the hounds.  
  
He must live near enough to the woods to make the daily journey, yet the woodsman saw no signs, no smoke or light, no sounds other than the cascade of the gunshot. The woods were filled with the cries of screaming foxes, of creatures moving through the night and owls calling out after them, harsh wind and the bitter rain that seared through trees, leaked into the cabin in slow flood. But the woodsman hadn’t seen another person. Not since he ran.  
  
He set out with the hounds and tucked the hunting knife into its sheath. The wind was up, and the clouds moved swiftly between bare branches overhead. They reached the stream within an hour, and the hounds dashed through and dragged wet leaves onto the shore, shook their coats with fervor. The woodsman sat, waited.  
  
He listened for the comfortable melody of birds, small rodents disturbing the leaves nearby. But he also listened for an unknown – perhaps faint footsteps, a soft hum. He waited for hours as the hounds lay in the sun. He chewed on boiled root, picked clovers that stuck to his tongue and tasted of dirt.  
  
The woods had kept him, these months. Food was scarce now, and his garden was a small thing, fickle and slow. But the woodsman knew his way here. He had built his cabin over weeks of hard work and forgetting. In the town, neighbors had whispered. He lived in barbed silence, feeling the crush of stares, of thoughts. A particular malice.  
  
The shot jolted him, shook him. It was not far – the sound was cannon-loud. The hounds bayed with desperate roughness, and one sprang off into the brush. The woodsman scrambled up, his hand clutching the knife handle as he ran. He shouted for the dog as the other kept a little behind him, her tail tucked.  
  
When he came to the site he felt ice go through him, like cool sweat sliding beneath the skin. Someone lingered. The copse was lined with gnarled branches, old trees that crowded together like fat fingers. The woodsman stood unmoving. Time slowed. He was conscious of a presence, eyes that fell on him from an unseen place. Every instinct urged action, to brandish the knife, to advance in any direction just to know. But instead the woodsman looked forward and watched as the hounds circled a wounded doe, her belly split open in a deep gash that bloomed red. She stared whale-eyed into nothing, her breath coming fast. The woodsman let the shock wash through him and settle in his stomach. He stood motionless, and waited some minutes until he felt he was alone, though he heard nothing, saw nothing. The deer tried to rise, and a plume of blood seeped into the grass. Her hooves gave out.  
  
He remembered the smell of fear.  
  
The girl had disappeared on a Sunday, her shoes muddied at the edge of the town. He had known, almost instantly, before the others could fathom it, before a day had passed. It was as if the world moved slowly backwards, warping into the shape of a memory that was not his. He watched her walk past the church, felt the priest’s hands slipping around her throat at dusk, her pulse soothing beneath his thumbs like a prayer.  
  
His nostrils flared.  
  
He’d moved forward unconsciously - he stood within feet of the deer. Every few seconds her legs would thrash out, and the wound gaped. The woodsman bent towards her, moved as he met her eyes, whispered softly to her. He held the knife behind his back. There was a horror that crept into his skull.  
  
He had found himself walking the church path at dark, dirt damp from the rain. The light from the abbey melted through the gloam like a winking eye. The woodsman felt himself moving. Knife behind, hard grip, and then when the priest emerged there was no thought, just the simple movement of the blade, and the wet spray that coated his chin, dripped down his neck in warm tendrils. The knife had slipped through the vestment at the soft center between breastbone, slid from shoulder to shoulder. There was horror here, and something urgent in his gut that spurred him. When the priest fell, the woodsman ran. He ran still.  
  
The deer let out a great breath, and as her eyes widened the woodsman knelt by her head, cupped it in the palm of his hand. When he drew the blade across her neck her eyes rolled back, and a great shudder ran through her. After that it was a slow descent into peace. Silence.  
  
  
He trembled as he walked back to the cabin. The hounds dipped in and out of view. His stomach roiled, and once he stopped and put his hands on his knees, steadying himself. This hunter knew, he thought. And the woodsman felt his heart racing as he sank down into the dirt, his head bowed. The knife was heavy in his hand, and he let it fall to the ground and covered it with leaves and dirt, felt its presence fade. After a time he got up and took a few shaky steps forward, then kept walking. The light changed.  
  
In the cabin he sat in darkness – he left the door open and stared out into the trees. He told himself killed the priest to avenge the girl, to give her justice. But he didn’t know her. Had never spoken to her. And as he chopped wood and skinned his hides and built himself a place in the wilderness, the woodsman would feel the rush of nausea at the memory of that night, but he also felt a release. Joy.  
  
The hunter saw, and left a gift to remind him.  
  
Who was he?

***  
  
When the woodsman woke there was a dead creature outside his door - a deer whose legs were bent back, its spine propped up so that it towered forward like a statue. Between its twisting antlers were two branches fashioned in the shape of a cross.  
  
***

  
There was no shot that day.  
  
The woodsman fed the hounds scraps of cured meat, brushed their coats with pine. He checked his traps and found a squirrel writhing, killed and skinned it for supper. He built a fire with wood stacked high and stoked it as he heated water over the hearth. He poured the water over his head and let the heat settle into his scalp, ran his fingers through the knots. The water trickled into his mouth and down into his beard. He found the mirror and razor by his coat, retrieved soap and worked it into a lather. He hadn’t shaved in months. The sensation shocked him – the sharpness of the blade, his skin seared by the air. Tufts of hair fell into the water. The mirror reflected his eyes and nose, and then the soft white of his cheeks and the curve of his lip, his thin neck. He touched his skin with care, and in the mirror he saw the dirty, rough tips of his fingers sliding over his chin. He was younger, suddenly.  
  
As night drew on the woodsman sharpened his knife as the hounds lay belly-up in the grass. The woodsman had taken the deer away, cut it down and butchered it with his axe. The cross remained, rooted in the ground. The woodsman stared as if waiting for it to make some gesture. He knew its creator lingered.  
  
After sunset, the woodsman saw a thin line of smoke spiral up into the night. He watched it for some time, paralyzed. He fought the urge to run again. His muscles tensed.  
  
He locked the hounds in the cabin, left water in a saucer and hushed them as the cried. He set out in the direction of the smoke. As he walked he thought of the doe’s eyes fading and saw in them the priest’s panicked face, his mouth bent into a grimace. He held onto the moment that the priest’s lids closed and his mouth went slack. The woodsman made a small pained sound at the clutching of his heart.  
  
He came upon a large fire ringed by heavy logs. There was a rope tied between two trees that suspended a shirt and a pair of thick trousers. There was a hat resting on a stump, a shotgun within reach.  
  
“You’ve come,” someone said. The woodsman turned and saw a man lent over a tub of water, his face shrouded in darkness. As he stood his face came into the light. He had a full beard, sharp cheekbones and hair drawn tight into a bun at the nape of his neck. His eyes were in shadow.  
  
“Who are you?” said the woodsman.  
  
The man drew forward and set a cup of water on the stump. He brought a cloth from his pocket and dipped it in, then ran it over the dull grey of a hunting knife. “Are you familiar with the story of St. Eustace?” he asked. He did not look up, but kept to his work. “He was a pagan – a Roman. He frequented woods not unlike these during his time in Tivoli, during peacetime. He was hunting a stag one day and saw between its antlers the image of a crucifix. It so moved him that he converted in that moment, without hesitation.”  
  
“How do you know me?” the woodsman asked. The hunter slipped the clean knife into a sheath and looked up. His mouth parted slightly, somewhere between a smile and a scowl. His eyes were bright.  
  
“I know you, Placidus,” he said. “Just as you know me.”  
  
“That’s not my name. Who are you?”  
  
“What is your name, then?”  
  
The woodsman shook his head, suddenly speechless. He felt depleted, his limbs heavy from the walk. There was mirth in the hunter’s gaze. He stood, and the woodsman felt a panic seize him. Move move move. But he kept still, and the hunter moved as if through water. When he came within reach the woodsman sensed a descending silence, a quiet dread. Without thinking he reached forward and grabbed the handle of the hunter’s knife, wielded it with a shaking hand. He held it to the hunter’s throat.  
  
He watched as the man’s lips parted wider, caught the quick white gleam of uneven teeth. The knife shook. The hunter closed his eyes and tipped his head back.  
  
The woodsman’s breath stuttered, and he felt his eyes go wide as he stared at the place where blade met skin, the rough hair of the hunter’s beard brushing the top of his hand.  
  
“Will,” he whispered. “My name is Will.”  
  
  



End file.
